Chapter 497

The sun beat down on the cracked asphalt, the air thick with the scent of dust and something else, something acrid and unsettling. It was the smell of the road, they said, La Carretera Perdida – the Lost Highway.

Old Man Vargas had warned them, his eyes wide and full of a terror that was almost comical in its intensity. He had grabbed at Juan's arm, his grip surprisingly strong, telling of cars that disappeared, of souls trapped in an unending loop.

"Do not go there, muchacho," he had croaked, his breath stale and smelling of cheap tobacco. "It will take you, as it has taken so many."

But Juan, young and foolish, with Maria by his side, hadn't listened. They were going to Veracruz, to the coast, and this was the most direct route.

He told himself the old man was senile. Just the ravings of an old man touched by the sun and too much mescal.

The road ahead was deserted. The asphalt stretched into the distance, the white lines seeming to pulse in the heat.

It was unsettling how still the air was. Not a breeze stirred.

Not even the sound of birds filled the empty space. Juan put a cassette into the tape player of his old Ford Falcon, trying to fill the void.

It was some rock and roll by a new English group called "The Beatles". The music was swallowed by the silence, each note swallowed into a deeper emptiness.

It felt…wrong. Maria looked at him with an unease that reflected his own, her hand clutching the dashboard.

"Are you sure about this, Juan?" She asked, her tone quiet.

"It's just a road, mi amor," He answered with bravado he didn't feel. "It will be over soon, and then we will be by the beach."

A long, drawn-out curve lay before them. The world tilted and swayed.

A feeling like vertigo grabbed Juan in his stomach. The landscape seemed to twist and bend at the periphery of their sight.

As though the road itself was alive. He straightened the car and stared into the never-ending path before them.

Juan gripped the steering wheel a bit harder, feeling his own nerves rising with every yard they traversed down the road. Then, they saw the first sign.

It was a small wooden cross beside the road, crude and weathered. Juan paid no mind at first, there were lots of these in rural mexico for the souls who had already moved on from the living realm.

As they continued forward, they were getting far too common. Each was adorned with a faded photograph of a car, identical to their own make and model, with various dates scribbled on it.

The dates only seemed to stretch between 1960 and now, it seemed. He kept passing these.

They multiplied until they stood like macabre sentinels on both sides of the road. An army of forgotten vehicles.

He took his foot off the accelerator a moment, slowing as he took his hand from the steering wheel and picked up one of the photos. He was getting more wary and uncomfortable.

A picture was of his own vehicle on the side of the road, though there were three men sitting in front of the Ford in the picture. Though the vehicle itself looked the same, the color was very faded, almost desaturated in an odd and eerie way.

Juan could feel his heart starting to hammer as his eyes seemed to take in all the details in a more direct and uneasy way.

"What are those dates, mi amor?" She asked, with more apprehension then he'd seen before, even from his abuela when he would cause a ruckus around the house.

He realized that he was holding on tight to her picture and hadn't fully released it. "I don't know, mi vida… they aren't the same.

That first date, 1960, that can't be...it's not like these are ancient relics." He finally responded, his throat becoming incredibly dry as each passing moment lingered on longer.

Maria just stared. He didn't know if he wanted to move forward or stay still.

They both seemed to be in a state of limbo now. A limbo where they were aware of a situation beyond them, beyond logic or reason.

"This can't be right" Maria simply said. The reality of what could happen began to unfold into her eyes and heart, she could see this with brutal clarity.

They were, in essence, staring down the grim barrel of reality, and whatever entity lay on this dreadful path. He couldn't have denied this fact.

They couldn't go backward and they were already deep. They were going to have to face whatever lies ahead and at least attempt to fight.

They tried to rationalize. That was until they had seen another picture.

This time, they looked back at it to realize that their Ford was in the picture. They were, now, within one of the images that now adorn each of these morbid milestones.

The people, of course, had not been them yet, only others. That's when he attempted to stop the car, placing both his feet into the pedal as hard as they would go.

Nothing. The car continued, the speed remaining completely steady despite Juan slamming his foot as hard as he could on the brakes.

Panic welled, a cold, paralyzing dread, as his attempts to stop the car failed. He glanced at his love next to him as she held on tightly to her seat.

The feeling that came off her radiated panic. It wasn't working.

Whatever controlled this wretched path had complete authority. He yanked on the emergency brake.

Nothing. The car went on, the needle stuck in place.

His face went pale and his knuckles grew white around the wheel, every inch that this car pushed him into his coming torment he loathed. Every moment now he was feeling that weight press against him.

She too now that both knew their coming peril. The sun seemed to darken as a chill spread through the car.

The air that had been thick now seemed to weigh down on their souls like an eternal shroud. The car continued, moving at the exact same speed, no matter what was attempted.

An act of cosmic horror that Juan's feeble mind simply could not begin to reconcile. Another cross came, another photograph of his car, a more desaturated image.

Three passengers with hollow eye sockets stared from the photo, but those passengers… were a few cars down the path, or was this another attempt of a mock warning. Juan didn't have long enough to see which was truly the case.

The image shifted in real time before his eyes as they approached a new monument. Juan glanced in his mirror, nothing there besides what appeared as darkness stretching along in both his right and left.

As they advanced to a new wooden stake and monument, they were within the picture once more and in real time. A few moments went by and the scene shifted again.

A different and more dreadful tableau formed into this ever present snapshot that seemed to appear to be just before they entered the upcoming event. They were coming close to where they might finally know what awaits them.

The anticipation was almost too unbearable for their very bones and skin to take in any more information than they already had. "Mi vida…" Juan could muster.

She held her hand into his and clutched tight. She stared back with a determined sense of grit, whatever happens she would not fall apart.

They will go into this with at least their dignity, if nothing else, if fate can give that much. The cross grew larger, now no more than a stake of wood that was crudely chopped with the various desaturated portraits.

Their faces always gaunt, the sockets of their eyes empty like they were mere puppets. It towered, grotesque, over them, looming ever nearer with a sick promise.

The photo changed again in front of them. It shifted to his face but now he had no pupils in this ghastly depiction.

The picture, they knew, meant it was just around the bend. He pressed harder down on the breaks, in an act of futile effort.

Maria clenched down. And with no preamble it happened.

They finally approached the location and everything they were expecting happened to occur. Their car slid smoothly into an intersection with other vehicles that could've come before or be moving with them simultaneously.

Some even passing through as ghosts, with their ghostly hands still holding a wheel that doesn't exist to anyone but them. It was a sea of terror with the screeching of tires, crunching of metal.

Their car became a concert of torment and carnage. This went on until their bodies eventually grew numb to it.

His own vehicle screeched violently as it joined an infernal roundabout, caught in an unending cycle of crashes and twisted metal. The noise of suffering like some broken symphony from the depths.

His body became mangled into grotesque angles as if he was some discarded play thing tossed away by a cruel child. They've made it to hell.

This highway is their new eternal torment, until some unforeseen element occurs. Maybe it won't even matter at all.

Juan saw, or what remained of Juan saw Maria, her head twisted at an impossible angle, her once bright eyes empty and devoid. The life that used to dance within her gaze is now an echo.

Within the never ending, dreadful place where her screams were no more audible in the cacophony of hell that they now reside within. Then, an eternity, as it had seemed in its awful slowness.

Another cross was coming, closer still and impossibly huge. Its very mass filled the landscape.

It grew large to them in an unbelievable manner as everything grew closer now. Juan closed his eyes, his brain simply refusing to deal with this.

And a photograph shifted again as they drew to their own torment. This one, of course, was of him.

This time, there was no car. Just Juan, his features desaturated, eyes like two voids that simply never existed to anyone other than himself now.

His twisted body still holding the wheel that means nothing here in this awful place. And as they shifted from a solid car back into that awful, spectral picture, a cold understanding washed over Juan.

He realized why their faces on all the previous pictures, and even his own picture he is about to enter into, have no pupils or eyes in them. The eyes of those on the Lost Highway, in the realm, were no longer within them.

Whatever created this cursed path took all but just a spectral husk of the body they had inhabited in their physical life, as that was enough. Their souls now were some grotesque puppet being danced along the path.

With, again, no one truly to care about this besides them. He reached out, a useless phantom limb, to the desaturated picture, a monument of his eternal suffering.

He felt a soul he could barely understand now get dragged out as something else replaces it into his shell. He simply watches himself continue to grip the wheel as he faded away from reality itself.

He became another macabre prop of that awful highway. The Lost Highway claimed another set of souls, forever stuck to their purgatory on this road of agony.

His desaturated spectral puppet moved along the loop forever, a sad and grotesque reminder of that young, hopeful man who hadn't listened. The tape player finally turned off.

The only sounds left to inhabit this horrific area is the squealing tires and mangled metal of lost, stolen souls. They simply faded in this hell, each cross and photo they saw along that never-ending road serving as grim witnesses to their plight.

The very last image of Juan is his own face on the stake next to the highway as his puppet continues. A twisted image of the foolish who ignored warnings.

The price was far more horrific than he had even ever conceived.